Lenovo used this week’s CES in Las Vegas to highlight several aspects of their 2018 product and service lineup in the augmented reality and virtual reality spaces. These announcements spanned both consumer and commercial/industrial applications, and include the Lenovo Mirage Solo headset, Mirage Camera, C220 Smart Glasses and NBD AH Cloud 2.0. Lenovo Mirage Solo and Mirage Camera with Daydream Billed as a “new take on VR consumption and creation,” this complementary product duo is targeted primarily at consumer markets. The Mirage Solo stands as the first stand-alone headset offering that is part of Google’s Daydream platform; an ill-fated offering from HTC was announced and

Headset manufacturer Pico Interactive, Inc. and HCI system developer uSens., Inc. have established a partnership that will see the Pico Goblin all-in-one VR headset incorporate uSens’ hand-tracking technology. The announcement came at this week’s CES 2018 in Las Vegas. “uSens and Pico already have a long-standing relationship, originating from developing custom business solutions together,” said uSens CTO and co-founder Dr. Yue Fei. “We are excited to formally work together into 2018 to bring our HCI solutions to their user base, as we see all-in-one and mobile headsets as the driving force behind growth in the VR market,” he continued. The partnership will see uSens’ 26DOF

HiScene, a Chinese provider of AR products and services is demoing it’s recently-launched HiAR augmented reality glasses at this year’s CES in Las Vegas. The product, which is intended for fields including aerospace, power, automotive manufacturing and education, previously won an Innovation Award at CES Asia and the Red Dot Design Award 2017. Notably, the company says their product is the first mass-produced binocular AR smart glasses in China. According to HiScene, the glasses improve brightness and heat dissipation compared to earlier models, while also featuring a minimalist user interface that is particularly well-suited to augmented reality. Of further interest is that the glasses integrate

HCI systems manufacturer uSens, Inc. announced the availability of uSensAr, a smartphone augmented reality engine, this week at CES 2018 in Las Vegas. uSensAR is designed to run optimally on lower-end Android hardware, including systems with lower-resolution cameras and comparatively underpowered CPUs. “ARcore currently only serves about 30 million Android phones, which is just five percent of the entire Android smartphone ecosystem,” said Dr. Yue Fei, uSens CTO and co-founder. The company indicated their platform could expand the reach of AR technologies to an estimated two billion smartphones. “With the release of uSensAR, we are allowing developers, smartphone manufacturers, and content creators to build those

Entertainment experience company LUCI has unveiled their immersion-on-demand wearable and VR headset products at this week’s CES 2018 in Las Vegas. Dubbed “LUCI immers” and “LUCI alyx,” respectively, the company appears to be looking to be a transformative player in the burgeoning wearable and VR sectors. “LUCI wants to fundamentally change how people consume content by giving users the most visually stunning experience possible through wearable technology,” said Josh Littlefield, vice president of global sales and marketing for LUCI. “We want users to be amazed by the nuances of every frame, every scene and every minute detail through an uncompromised viewing experience,” he continued. The

Tech startup Looxid Labs announced this week that it was awarded a Best of Innovation Award in CES 2018’s Virtual Reality category for its LooxidVR headset. Previous winners in the category have included Samsung, for their Gear VR headset, and Google, for their Tilt Brush 3D/VR painting system. LooxidVR is a mobile-based VR headset, similar in design to Samsung’s Gear VR and Google Daydream View, with the added features of having embedded EEG sensors and eye-tracking cameras. The result is that the headset can empower tracking its wearer’s brain activity, eye movement and pupil dilation. “It is really encouraging to see our technology and potential

SoundHound Inc., a developer of AI and conversational intelligence technologies, this week introduced a range of integrations empowered by their Houndify Voice AI platform. Demonstrations of some of those integrations will occur at this week’s CES in Las Vegas. The integrations run a very wide range of IoT categories, including automotive, connected speakers, robotics, appliances, augmented reality experiences, smart home, and wearables, from companies including Hyundai, HUMAX, Mayfield Robotics, AvatarMind Robots, PhotoSpring and Onkyo. “Conversational voice interfaces represent the next shift in how we interact with the devices around us and the user behavior of speaking to things will quickly become an integral part of

Imaging technology firm YI Technology today announced details of its YI Horizon VR180 Camera at CES 2018 in Las Vegas. The camera, created in collaboration with Google’s Virtual Reality team, is billed as an easy-to-use, stereoscopic 3D camera. The camera features seamless integration with YouTube and Google Photos, and is compatible with Google Cardboard, Google Daydream, PlayStation VR and other certified viewers. Notably, content created by the camera can also be viewed easily in 2D. “We truly believe that it should be easy for everyone to create and share virtual reality experiences,” said Sean Da, CEO of YI Technology. The camera supports 3D video at

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich used Monday’s CES 2018 keynote to highlight how data is changing our work and personal lives, while simultaneously pushing forward technological innovation both at his company and within the larger technology sector. His keynote also specifically addressed Intel’s new initiatives in the VR space. “Data is going to introduce social and economic changes that we see perhaps once or twice in a century,” Krzanich said. “We not only find data everywhere today, but it will be the creative force behind the innovations of the future. Data is going to redefine how we experience life – in our work, in our homes,

NextVR, a leading provider of systems for broadcasting live sports and music events in virtual reality, yesterday previewed several upgrades to its technology platform. The announcement was made in conjunction with the opening of CES 2018 in Las Vegas. In what was billed as a “sneak peek,” NextVR unveiled three major initiatives: introducing Six Degrees of Freedom (6DoF) technology; improving fidelity of transmitted content; and adding augmented reality to their platform. NextVR is currently compatible with the Samsung Gear VR headset or Google Daydream View combined with an appropriate smartphone, PlayStation VR, or Windows Mixed Reality system. “VR is the most demanding visual medium ever

NGCodec, a company that specializes in developing algorithms, silicon logic and FPGA implementations for cloud video processing, this week announced the availability of their potentially transformative cloud-based encoding technologies via the Amazon AWS Marketplace. The company’s RealityCodec acts as a low-delay H.265/HEVC encoder, which allows much of the processing load of VR video streams to be shifted into the cloud. The codec also boasts sufficiently low latency that it can reliably deliver VR streams to untethered, mobile, VR head-mounted displays. “We have worked diligently to bring our advanced video codecs to the Amazon Cloud and to demonstrate the potential for cloud media and virtual reality,”

A long time ago, the machine you’re using to read this article would’ve been large enough to fill an entire room. Moore’s Law dictates that as time goes on, processing power increases and physical size decreases. Just as this applies to the smartphone in your hand or the PC on your desk, this also applies to Virtual Reality headsets and display technologies. Meet Kopin. Kopin manufactures what they call OLED microdisplays. These are essentially tiny OLED screens with huge resolution numbers. Their “Lightning” microdisplays, for instance, boast 2048 x 2048 resolution (per eye) at a 120 Hz refresh rate. This is well beyond the HTC

ICSpace is a virtual fitness environment from researchers at the Bielefeld University’s Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology. (Or CITEC for short.) As a blend of VR and AR technologies focused on fitness, ICSpace aims for realism to accomplish its goals. The most interesting part of ICSpace, however, is how it captures virtual avatars. Virtual avatars are nothing new to gamers, and are common in apps like VRChat as well- but more often than not, these avatars have little resemblance to their real counterparts. ICSpace changes that by using a setup of 40 DSLR cameras to photograph the user from all angles. Using these photographs, ICSpace can

Hardlight VR is a company focused on making their Hardlight suit a reality. The Hardlight suit is essentially a suit that can be worn over your torso and arms to provide full haptic feedback in accordance with the games you’re playing, as well as detailed arm tracking. When used alongside VR motion controllers and a full head-tracking headset like the Vive, this pretty much brings your entire upper body into VR, sensation included. Recently, Hardlight VR showed off a Mark III version of their Hardlight suit. The Mark III drops the price of the Hardlight suit down to $300 from $630. How exactly they managed

Those in the market for a very expensive, last-minute Christmas gift may be in luck — on December 14, Apple made its new iMac Pro available for purchase. Lauded as the most powerful Mac in the company’s history, the workstation-class iMac Pro features Xeon multi-core processors, a 27” 5K Retina display, and heaps of additional features. That this new machine is being released at the same time as a significant upgrade to Final Cut Pro X is not coincidental. This is decidedly not a computer intended for consumer audiences — it is, rather, a powerful workstation intended to provide the raw computing power needed for

Taiwan-based computer hardware manufacturer Acer this week introduced their Windows mixed reality headset to consumers in India. The announcement came at the conclusion of the Acer-sponsored Predator League gaming event in Bengaluru. The headset, which boasts a 2880 x 1440p resolution and up to 90 Hz refresh rate, was released in North America in early October. The headset also features a 13-foot cable. Pricing in India is not yet available, although will likely be near US pricing, which is approximately 19,200 Rs. given exchange rates at the time of this article. This is, notably, the first Windows MR headset to be made available in India.

A seemingly impressive VR development that came out of “stealth mode” this week remains short on details. Drawboard, which according to its Twitter account is based in San Francisco, appeared rather suddenly on the web last week. Its website is seeking pre-orders for a pen to be used in VR, offering features such as six degree-of-freedom, sub-millimeter tracking; 512 levels of pressure sensitivity; USB charging; and tactile feedback. The pen apparently “works with Windows Mixed Reality headsets or Rift/Vive via Leap Motion,” and will be available in a “limited production run” in early 2018. However, the current state of the product’s development is unclear, as

A Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei may not have extensive mainstream penetration in the West like Apple and Samsung do, but in 2016 they hit #9 in revenue for tech companies around the world. A lot of their success is based in China, and they often trade places with Apple as the 2nd largest smartphone manufacturer in the world. Huawei is a big name in the industry, to say the least. That they’re working on a Gear VR-styled headset has been known for a while: journalists at Road To VR went hands-on with a Huawei VR headset at CES 2017 earlier this year. Now, they’re developing their

Quanta Computer Inc. is a manufacturing partner for Apple and many other hardware manufacturers in the PC/smartphone space. They’re one of the most important companies that consumers have never heard of. Recently, they reached out to Lumus, an Israel-based business that designs displays for AR glasses and headsets. If you recall Google’s “Glass” project from a few years back (which included very limited shipments of Google Glasses), Lumus works on similar hardware and has been doing so for quite a while. In 2008, they sold the PD-18, one of the first AR glasses of its kind, and just a few years later they started producing hardware

If you haven’t heard of Varjo Technologies yet, there’s a good chance that’ll soon change. The Finnish startup is working on an advanced VR headset, built from modified Oculus Rift’s and other components, and is aimed at professional users. The Varjo Alpha Prototype (a work-in-progress name) offers a 1080p display for each eye, with a 35-degree horizontal FOV for each. There is also a “context display”, which offers a 100 FOV view and runs at 1080 x 1200 at 90hz refresh rate. According to Varjo, the refresh rate on these headsets may eventually go as high as 120hz, for true-to-life motion. While the headset may